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It’s common for cafes and restaurants to have their own kitchen gardens and produce seasonal herbs and vegetables to feature on the menu. But at East Elevation in East Brunswick, the concept has been taken to a whole new level.

Shiitake, and blue and pink King Oyster mushrooms grow on logs. They unfurl in dark, moist bags, and fruit in jars. Microgreens – tiny delicate greens that are sprouted from germinated seeds, and consumed in their entirety – in various stages of sprouting green up the space, and passionfruit vines curl and weave through the exposed trusses.

The gabled roof space above the kitchen has been turned into a mushroom- and microgreens-producing greenhouse. Its unique bounty is for adornment, rather than menu staples, and often features at East Elevation’s presentation nights. Customers can also buy microgreens to take home.

What goes around...

Green MagazineJuly 2014

Grown and Gathered is nourishing fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs – and community – with a novel approach to growing for supply.

There’s an acre of well-drained land sitting plum in the middle of the stately Tahbilk Vineyard, some 200 kilometres northeast of Melbourne, that is producing more than 500 varieties of fruits, vegetables, cut and edible flowers. Soon it will start to yield grains like corn, rye and oats too – and all without bringing any new inputs onto their farm.

This is what’s called a closed loop farming system, and it’s the all of Matt and Lentil Purbrick, and a border collie named Pepper. The couple have spent the past few years forging a multifaceted living from the things they hold dear: growing and gathering, being sustainable and building community.

Diaspora Dining: Greek flavors Down Under

Culinary BackstreetsMarch 2014

A Greek restaurant balances traditional family dining and personal history with the best of modern cuisine in Melbourne, Australia

Ah, Melbourne. It’s long been the go-to city for generations of immigrants seeking – either by choice or circumstance – a new place to call home, and now the city, which is Australia’s second-largest, has a reputation as its most culturally diverse.

Greeks have been gravitating towards Melbourne, nestled in the southeastern corner of Australia, ever since the gold rush of the 1850s. The Greek Orthodox Community was formally founded in 1897, and the first Greek language newspaper, Australis, was issued in 1913.

Five years ago, Rohan Anderson was feeling guilty. Guilty about the impact his lifestyle was having on the earth, about his silent acquiescence to the state of the modern food industry, and about feeding his daughters crap food.

“I used to feed my kids chicken nuggets. And I knew they were full of crap. If you knew what was in those things, you wouldn’t eat them! “

So he made some changes. Big ones. He stopped shopping at the supermarket. He quit his job. He moved out of the city. He planted a garden, and started growing, gathering, hunting and cooking seasonally, out the back of Ballarat in north-western Victoria. And he began charting it all in a blog, wholelarderlove.com.

Global roaming: Berlin

FeastNovember 2012Every Tuesday and Friday for the past century, Maybachufer Strasse, a pretty, tree-lined street running alongside the Landwehrkanal (Landwehr Canal) in Neukölln, has been coming alive with the hustle and bustle of Berlin's biggest Turkish market, the Türkenmarkt.

Locals of native German and Turkish origin alike haggle over freshly made breads and cheeses, dips and dolma, produce, fish and meat, and goods imported direct from Turkey: jams, yoghurts, spices, coffee, and more.

There's no need to wait until you get home to indulge: many of the munchies on display – like the wares at Hüseyin Ayvaz’s stall – are Turkish snack foods, designed to be eaten on the move. Hüseyin does a roaring trade in various types of dolma, or stuffed vegetables, börek pastries layered with spinach and tulum, a soft white cheese, and the house specialty, gözleme, an oven-baked, soft flatbread baked in a sańć – a large, bell-shaped metal dish covered with ashes and live coals – that his niece, 20-year-old Gökçe Agezońülu, deftly fills with cheese, tomato and rocket then rolls for easy handling and eating.

To market: Gewurzhaus

FeastDecember 2011Heady aromas draw me in as I approach Gewürzhaus, a European-style spice store that opened on Melbourne’s iconic Lygon Street in June 2010. The closer I get, the stronger the musky medley of aromas becomes: the piquant tanginess of Asia; the citrusy zest of Morocco; the rich earthiness of Europe.

Owned and managed by 28-year-old Eva Konecsny and her 29-year-old sister Maria, Gewürzhaus has an exotic market feel. Large, airtight barrels containing more than 300 spices, sugars and salts from every region of the world line the walls, along with a selection of customised chocolates, cute kitchen aprons and stylish kitchen wares you didn’t know you were missing, but will probably have to have.

Top of the class: Dish du Jour

FeastSeptember 2011PDF-DishduJour-CopyrightV...“I hope you all like butter. We are going to be doing a lot of cooking with butter! Also garlic, and onions, and wine!” declares Frenchman Sébastien Piel, smiling broadly at the people clustered around his open plan kitchen in a warehouse tucked down a cobbled alleyway in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran.

We’re here to learn how to cook a three-course meal Piel calls ‘Rustic Fantastic’. It's the kind of traditional, slow cooked repas de fête, or feast, a French family might prepare for a leisurely Sunday lunch at their weekend home in the countryside in Normandy in northern France, where Piel grew up.

I’m not really the athletic type. My idea of working out is putting out the bins, and I’m breaking a sweat before I’ve even reached the gate. But if eating chocolate was an Olympic event, I’d win gold every time.

Imagine my delight, then, at finding a cosy and intimate cafe brewing strong coffee, baking fresh cakes and crafting an irresistible range of quality handmade chocolates on the premises. Comfortable chairs, funky beats and wallpaper featuring bambi lookalikes are bonuses. It’s the perfect place to train, and boy, have I been training.